


Hi! We're Your Companions Now!

by jesmalestiel



Series: Lunar Harmony Through Time and Space [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon LGBTQ Character, F/F, F/M, Female Character of Color, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Character of Color, M/M, Multi, Person of Color Hermione Granger, Polyamory, Time Travel, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2020-11-02 12:16:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20743178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesmalestiel/pseuds/jesmalestiel
Summary: In the midst of showing off, the Doctor gets a surprise in the form of new faces that find his very familiar. Well, not his face exactly....They know him, but he doesn't know them. Harry, Hermione, and Luna are the Doctor's Companions. Takes place alongside season 3 & beyond with wild canon divergence.





	1. LONDON MARCH 2007

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer: **   
I don’t own Harry Potter or Doctor Who. 
> 
> **Author’s Note: **  
This is part of a series. It’s more or less an OK place to start and can be read on its own, but it will make more sense if you read the other stuff at some point too. That’s time travel for you I suppose.

**LONDON MARCH 2007**

“Doctor! Doctor, is that you?” 

The Doctor turned around from where he was about to enter his TARDIS to see a young woman who looked to be about in her late twenties. She had dark skin, bushy brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, and was wearing overalls, a jumper, and combat boots. The sort of outfit one could wear on an adventure. 

“Well, I suppose that depends on who’s asking? Who might you be?”

“I’m Hermione Granger. I just saw you take off your tie in front of a complete stranger. Why did you do that?”

“To make a point. Tell me, Ms. Granger, do you generally make a habit of knowing someone’s name before they tell you?” The Doctor leaned against the TARDIS. This was interesting. Proving to Martha that he could time travel could wait.

“Oh, Doctor, that would be telling! _ Spoilers _ must be avoided. Now, I _ should _ say, that we really _ must _get going. Martha is waiting for us after all.”

“How do you know about Martha. Tell me, now.”

“_Hermione _ you are having way too much fun with this. We want him to take us with him, not blacklist us.” 

It was only the over 900 years of travelling through time and space that let the Doctor keep his composure as someone who was previously completely and totally invisible to him via sight, sound, and smell (though that might have been the nearby dumpster) suddenly appeared. The young man who spoke also appeared to be late twenties, as did the blonde woman with him. 

“Who _ are _you people.”

“We’re your companions Doctor. You just haven’t met us yet. Pip pip. Let’s go meet Shakespeare. I’ve always wanted to see one of his plays but you kept saying I already had!” The blonde woman daintily reached into the Doctor’s pocket and took one of his TARDIS keys, easily opening what could very often be a very stubborn door. She then had the audacity to slip said key into the brassiere of her 16th century dress rather than return it(!) as she and her two compatriots walked into the TARDIS as if it were second nature.

Utterly flabbergasted, the Doctor followed.


	2. LONDON 1599

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione rolled her eyes again. "What do you mean a witch? _How_ did she look like a witch?"  
"Cackling, flying on a broom —"  
"Not all witches fly on brooms," Hermione muttered. Luna looked at her sympathetically, remembering a particular incident involving the eleventh Doctor and a piñata.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am absolutely DELIGHTED that this story has subscribers already and that people are interested to read about the adventures of lunar harmony through time and space! So, without further ado, here are some fun times with our favorite bard. :)
> 
> (Thanks to cyborg-goddess for being my beta!)

**LONDON 1599**

“Hang on, will I be OK here?” Martha asked as the five of them made their way through the city street.

“What do you mean?” The Doctor asked, turning to face her.

“Hello, not exactly white? I don’t want to get carted off as a slave or something,” Martha snapped.

“Well—” The Doctor’s response was cut off by Harry covering his mouth as Hermione threw an arm around Martha. Luna skipped slightly ahead of them.

“The Doctor, bless him, quite regularly takes the form of a white man, and is going to tell you that this is not unlike our time. What he’s leaving out of the narrative is that racists exist there too. As a general rule, Martha, we time travellers can make our way existing outside of the norms of the places we drop in to, but be sensible about it. When you’re in the future it’s less of a problem, but especially when in the past, pick a white person as your buddy and stick with them if you don’t want to get ‘carted off’ as you say. And don’t be surprised if people mistake you for a mistress.”

Martha looked mildly startled at the beginning of the speech, but nodded. “Thanks Hermione. I appreciate the honesty. You’ve travelled with him a lot then? How come he doesn’t seem to know you though”

“We’ve spent a lot of time with the Doctor, he just hasn’t met us before,” Hermione replied. Martha was about to respond to that argument because it made no sense when Luna returned to them.

“It’s just up there! The Globe!”

“The Globe?” Martha asked.

“Oh, yes, the Globe Theatre! Brand new. Just opened. Through, strictly speaking, it's not a globe, it's a tetradecagon. Fourteen sides. Containing the man himself.”

“Whoa, you don't mean —” 

“Didn’t he tell you, Martha?” Harry asked. “We’re to see the Bard.”

“Shakespeare?”

“William Shakespeare!” The Doctor cut in. He was more than a little put out by these people who really just seemed to have popped out of nowhere and were stealing his thunder with regard to impressing Martha. He didn’t like to admit it, but he was a bit of a showoff, and he wasn’t able to do his usual level of showing off with an entourage that seemed to be able to predict his almost every move. Honestly he had half a mind to leave them back where he found them, but the trio was an interesting bunch, and he wanted to solve the mystery of who they were and how they had acquired the massive amounts of information that they seemed to have. If there was anything that the Doctor loved, it was solving a mystery.

“Miss Jones, will you accompany me to the theatre?”

“Mister Smith, I will!”

LHTTAS LHTTAS LHTTAS

Watching the Doctor flirt with Shakespeare made Hermione roll her eyes, out of fondness more than anything else. He admonished Jack for being flirtatious, but the alien needed to look into a mirror more often. This Doctor was ever the dashing hero wasn’t he? A romantic, tragic figure. His whole manner seemed to ache with loss. 

Musing over what she knew of his timeline, Hermione figured that this was right about when he lost Rose for the first time. She knew that the other woman would return at some point, and leave again, but the Doctor had always been cagey about the details. Something about affecting someone’s personal timeline and spoilers. Then he grumbled about meeting people out of order and adjusted his bowtie before shouting about _ who ate the last of the jammy dodgers? _ To which Harry replied _ you’re a time traveler, you’ll never run out of jammy dodgers_. But the Doctor just got this pensive look on his face and told them that _ everything has its time, and everything ends _ and Luna said _ we’re being far too serious here, especially when there are so many kinds of cookies in the world_. 

“Hermione, what a lovely name, for such a lovely lady.”

Oh gods, was it her turn to be flirted with?

“It’s Greek,” Hermione replied, trying her best to remember that Shakespeare was a person like anyone else, and that she had been named after a woman from Greek myth and not from a play written by the man in front of her.

“Yes, the daughter of the most beautiful woman in the world. I daresay that you, too, have a face that could launch a thousand ships.”

“Well, if everyone is interested, six is enough to constitute an orgy, and that’s something I’ve been wanting to cross off the list for a while,” Luna interjected.

And Hermione was brought back down to earth. She let out a sigh and evaluated the room. Harry met her eyes and gave her a bemused smile, weary and resigned to their partner’s antics. Martha was shocked and looked like she was starting to doubt herself and wonder what kind of people she was traveling with. The Doctor was flabbergasted and more than a little disturbed, and Shakespeare seemed intrigued, but Hermione was trying not to read into that too deeply.

Before anyone else could get a word in edgewise, Lynley, the Master of the Revels, burst in and demanded to see the play that Shakespeare was composing. It was apparently not fully approved, and in his outrage Lynley declared that no one would ever see Love's Labour's Won.

In all the confusion, Luna’s comment was gracefully dropped from the conversation, and they moved on to evading questions from Shakespeare about their land of Freedonia, most of them borne from the rather strong reactions of both Martha and Hermione at Shakespeare’s clumsy attempts to compliment them while being inadvertently racist and sexist. This was broken up by a scream from outside, and the discovery that Lynley wasn’t going to be able to stop the play in quite the fashion that he had hoped.

“This isn’t our kind of witchcraft,” Hermione concluded after a quick, but thorough examination of the body, using a basic wandless scan to avoid panicking any Muggles about further witches in their mist by pulling out an obviously magical instrument. “It’s alien. We’ll talk more inside.”

The five time travellers made their excuses to Shakespeare before convening in Harry and Luna's room. The trio decided that, due to delicate sensibilities, Harry and Luna would be the couple this time, and Hermione roomed with Martha, while the Doctor got a room to himself. Harry paid the barmaid generously and ahead of time, knowing the Doctor’s tendency to dine and dash, and knowing that wasn’t exactly a great policy to have when using the hospitality of those still recovering from a plague. 

"What do you mean, 'not your kind of witchcraft?'" Martha asked curiously.

"Eh, yeah, I suppose we haven't explained that bit yet, have we, loves?" Harry looked sheepishly to Hermione and Luna, who shrugged.

"The three of us are wixen. Witches, since you are most likely more familiar with that term. Mostly. Some of us are a little bit more than that," Hermione said slyly. 

"Let's not mention that dear. No need to frighten them."

"You're witches?" Martha asked, with a tone of disbelief.

"If by witch you take the definition that we can perform the typical earth magic of humans, then yes, we are witches," Luna replied airly, pulling out her wand and neatly producing a flower crown, which she promptly placed on Harry's head with a levitation charm.

The Doctor added another mental note to his file on the trio that had declared themselves as future companions. Mages. He could barely remember the last time he had encountered true human mages, let alone traveled with any. Generally he tended to stay away from magic, the draw of it being a temptation he found hard to resist.

"Great, well, if you're all magic then, what kind of magic was that?" Martha asked, apparently deciding to move on and accept the impossible in order to solve the problem at hand.

The fond smile that had appeared on Harry's face at Luna's antics vanished. "_That _ was an abomination. There is a kind of magic that we refuse to practice. Black magic, or dark magic it is sometimes called. It seeps into the soul of someone and rots them from the inside out. The poison of the magic comes from the words of the spells themselves. The universe can break apart just from the right word, and that's what that magic was. Harnessing the right words to drown Lynley from the inside. Whoever these witches are, they are using a power far older and far darker than I am willing to touch, and I've dealt with a fair bit of darkness in my time," Harry replied solemnly.

"We all have, and we're not going to solve this tonight — it's already quite late, and I can tell that those who need sleep are getting tired. Come along Martha. Doctor, I think your room is across from ours," Hermione led Martha and the Doctor out of the room and gave Luna a pointed look, to which the other woman nodded before taking their partner, who looked rather haunted, by the hand and leading him to the bed with a murmur. Hermione knew they would take care of one another, and she needed to nip in the bud what looked like _ another _ young woman who had fallen in love with the renegade time lord. 

LHTTAS LHTTAS LHTTAS

At the sound of yet another scream the five were up and out of their beds, this time arriving in Shakespeare's room. 

"What? What was that?" Harry and Hermione rushed to Shakespeare and Martha rushed to the window. The Doctor and Luna were tending to Dolly, who had collapsed. Luna pulled her into her lap and shook her head at the Doctor, who said to the room at large:

"Her heart gave out. She died of fright."

"Uh, guys?" Martha said dubiously.

"What did you see?" the Doctor asked, gently closing Dolly's eyes before walking over to the window.

"A witch."

Hermione rolled her eyes again. "What do you mean a witch? _ How _ did she look like a witch?"

"Cackling, flying on a broom —"

"Not all witches fly on brooms," Hermione muttered. Luna looked at her sympathetically, remembering a particular incident involving the eleventh Doctor and a piñata.

"A woman has _ died _, can we stop speaking of witches?" Shakespeare said, sitting down in his chair wearily. "Oh, sweet Dolly Bailey. She sat out three bouts of the plague in this place when we all ran like rats. But what could have scared her so? She had such enormous spirit."

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light," the Doctor mused.

"I might use that," said Shakespeare.

"You can't. It's someone else's," the Doctor quipped.

The trio quietly took Dolly's body out of the room and began to make arrangements as Martha and the Doctor continued to speak with Shakespeare. Knowing the Doctor, he would be off on some sort of trail, discovering what was happening next, but in the meantime Dolly undoubtedly had a family, and they needed to be taken care of too.

LHTTAS LHTTAS LHTTAS

By the time the trio caught up with the Doctor and Martha on All Hallows Street, where they had tracked down the home of the witches, the twosome had already sent Shakespeare ahead to stop his own play, because the aliens had enchanted it to release even more of their kind.

"Great. So we're preparing to fight an entire horde of black magic users from the dawn of time. It's times like these when I almost miss when the worst thing we had to worry about was Voldemort," Harry groaned. 

“_Harry _ you say that about every alien invasion, it’s getting old,” Hermione sighed. Luna, meanwhile, seemed to be running some sort of calculation using her wand, and interrupted what would surely devolve into unnecessary amounts of banter.

“Indeed it is, but we should probably confront the alien witch now, before that horde gets released. She oh so nicely opened the door for us,” Luna pointed to where the door to a nearby house had opened, and the five time travelers entered a home that definitely would have won a prize as a haunted house in a Halloween competition. 

The Doctor and Martha entered first, with the three mages hanging back on the first floor, casting silencing and invisibility spells on themselves. Distantly they heard: “...the power of a name works only once. Observe. I gaze upon this bag of bones and now I name thee Martha Jones!” Once they realized that Martha was down, but alive, the three made their way up to the second floor via advanced self-levitation (a less impressive way to say that they flew without brooms) and situated themselves in a way to lay a trap for the Carronite. They allowed the Doctor to extract the useful information from her — that Shakespeare’s grief had released only three Carronites, but they planned to use _ Love Labour’s Won _ to release the rest — but once she took the Doctor’s hair, the stakes got too high, and Hermione, Luna, and Harry each hit her with synchronized stunning, sleeping, and petrifying charms. That particular cocktail was one they had perfected under the tutelage of an old friend, and had proven effective in disabling many an enemy. To completely mitigate the threat, Luna transfigured the Carronite into a Barbie, and stuck her into a reinforced iron cage. Meanwhile, Harry cast a rejuvenation charm on Martha, in order to not only wake her from the sleeping spell, but also wake and cheer her, given the negative after effects. 

“Grab hold then,” Harry gestured for Martha to take his arm as Luna grabbed the Doctor’s.

“What for?” Martha asked curiously.

“Try not to be too alarmed, and don’t forget to breathe out once it’s over,” Harry replied.

“What do you —” in the next instant Martha’s words were cut off as she felt as though her whole body was being squeezed and wrung through a tube, a sick and horrible sensation coursing through her. Then it was gone in a flash and she was left heaving. She faintly noticed that they were now outside the Globe and the Doctor was off running, Harry and Luna at his heels. Hermione had stayed behind and was rubbing her back sympathetically. 

“One’s first experience apparating is never pleasant, I’m sorry. Harry was a bit of a tosser to go about it that way, but there’s really nothing that could have prepared you on such short notice. How are you feeling?”

“Like I know what a towel feels like. But I don’t want these alien witches from the dawn of time to take over the planet, so no use worrying over me. Let’s get a shift on,” Martha drew on her resolve and stood upright, moving with Hermione toward the Globe.

LHTTAS LHTTAS LHTTAS

In the end, things were rather simple; they managed to save enough time by apparating that they stopped the play long before the ending activation code was read out, and so the horde was never released. Instead, Harry and Luna snuck up on the remaining two Carronites and disabled them, stealing their orb before giving the Doctor the signal to stop the play, which he did with far more success than Shakespeare had via convincing the crowd that its performance had been banned on the orders of the queen herself, and that any who saw or spoke of its contents would be put to death. A rather dramatic stance, but the Doctor could be rather persuasive even without the perception filter and compulsion charm he currently had at his disposal. 

All copies of the play were summoned via a superpowered _ accio _ charm and summarily burned, and the Carronite Barbies were placed back inside the orb, which the Doctor locked up in a trunk in the TARDIS for safe keeping, right next to his Agatha Christie books.

All in a day’s work.

LHTTAS LHTTAS LHTTAS 

The trio were lounging in a TARDIS kitchen, waiting for Martha and the Doctor to get back from saying their goodbyes to Shakespeare. They had already had an extended farwell the night before, and didn’t see the need to prolong things, especially when they rediscovered (discovered for the first time?) their favorite of the TARDIS kitchens, which featured entirely yellow 1950s style furniture and appliances, for all that the underlying tech was cutting edge. Well, it was more accurate to say that Hermione and Luna were lounging, Harry was making banana pancakes and singing off-key pop songs from the late twenty-teens. They felt a shift as the TARDIS took off in flight, and realized that they must be leaving 1599.

“I wonder where-to next?” Luna mused.

“Well, the Doctor did say he was only going to take Martha on one trip,” Hermione replied in a sensible tone of voice, sipping on a milkshake. She kept a straight face for about ten seconds before cracking a smile and laugh. “So we’re going to at least one more planet in the far future before we see our earth again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Minor edits on 10/21/2020**


	3. NEW NEW YORK 5,000,000,053

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Disclaimer:** I don’t own _Harry Potter_ or _Doctor Who_. Bolded dialogue is taken directly from Doctor Who series 3 episode 3, “Gridlock.”
> 
> _A/N:_ It was pointed out to me that the last chapter was a bit… difficult for those who aren’t intimately familiar with Doctor Who Season 3. Sorry about that. I’ve tried to make this chapter stand on its own a bit more, and I’ve currently evaluating whether it might be worth it to rewrite the previous chapter. If any other readers would like to weigh in that would be appreciated, I always like feedback. Thanks to cyborg-goddess for being equal parts beta and binge watch buddy.

“So one, trip to the past, and one trip to the future eh?” Harry muttered to Hermione as he eyed the Doctor asking Martha if she wanted another trip in the TARDIS.

“This might be a new—old, I guess—face, but I think I know the Doctor well enough to know that he’s not quite ready to say goodbye to this one yet. One more trip my arse,” Hermione snorted.

“I like your arse,” Luna piped up from next to them, where she was playing with a Jacob’s ladder.

“Well last night would need make a lot less sense if you didn’t,” Harry quipped, and Hermione slapped his arm.

“Oi! Flirtation squad! We’re here!” the Doctor called. “**Year five billion and fifty-three, planet New Earth! Second hope of mankind! Fifty thousand light years from your old world, and we're slap bang in the middle of New New York. Although, technically it's the fifteenth New York from the original, so it's New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York. One of the most dazzling cities ever built**.”

The Doctor threw open the doors to the TARDIS and he and Martha walked out… into pouring rain. It was a grimy, cinderblock alleyway, and not exactly the dazzling city they had been expecting. 

“**Oh, that's nice! Time Lord version of dazzling**,” Martha hurried to zip up her coat, and the two of them hurried down the alleyway, the Doctor explaining that they must be in some sort of under city. The trio hung back, watching the Doctor with critical eyes. (Well, Harry and Hermione were critical. Luna managed to never look particularly critical, even when she was in the middle of giving you a complete dressing down for unruly behavior with regard to the proper methods of pickle fermentation.) In any case, the trio was watching the Doctor, and they didn't like what they saw. This was a Doctor in mourning. This was a Doctor who, as much as he was putting on his usual show, did not have his hearts in the presentation. He was taking Martha to the same places that he took Rose, like a broken record. This Doctor was broken, and Martha, like the stereotypical besotted woman, wanted to fix him. Unlike the stereotypical besotted woman, however, she wasn't going to let herself be trampled over in the process. Still, while the Doctor and Martha went back and forth with the local street merchants about the patches they sold that provided emotions—drugs, in other words—the trio made quiet plans to include Martha in their companion support group. They halted in their discussion, however, when Hermione took notice of the woman that the Doctor and Martha had been talking to. 

"**I'm sorry, what were you saying**?" The woman asked the Doctor in a serene voice. She was calm, almost docile, where before she had been distressed to the point of despair. 

"**Your parents. Your mother and father. They're on the motorway**." The Doctor replied in a flat voice. 

"**Are they? That's nice**." The woman replied, sounding bemused. "**I'm sorry. I won't keep you." **She wandered in another direction, not seeming to pay very much attention to her destination, if there was one.

The three mages were incredibly intrigued about the process, not unlike an obliviation charm, and Hermione immediately began questioning one of the vendors. Martha stared after the woman who had taken the forget patch with disbelief and a bit of disdain. "**So that's the human race five billion years in the future. Off their heads on chemicals**." 

It happened more quickly than any of them could have anticipated. Harry and Luna were listening intently to the merchant's responses to Hermione's fast-paced questions, while the Doctor was preparing to lecture Martha on why it wasn't fair to judge the current state of humanity. Out of nowhere came the man and woman, waving their weapons around and grabbing an unsuspecting Martha from their midst. 

The Doctor shouted rather uselessly, but the trio lept into action, Harry and Hermione utilizing close quarter apparation to equal parts pull the man off Martha and apparate Martha to safety, while Luna summoned their weapons. The two confused would-be abductors were then quickly cuffed with conjured handcuffs that Harry seemingly pulled out of his pocket and sat down in some chairs that Luna found nearby. 

(The merchants were more entertained than they had been in _ years_. It was rare that people had short-range teleports and knew how to use them like that, especially with the city on lockdown.)

"Martha! Are you alright?" The Doctor asked, looking over his shaken companion. 

"Yeah, I'm alright. Blimey these witches are fast. You sure know how to pick 'em Doctor."

"Apparently I will," the Doctor agreed. 

HWYCN HWYCN HWYCN 

The couple were car hackers, looking for a third person to take with them in the fast lane. Traffic, it seemed, was slow. Very slow. Too slow. The Doctor, naturally was curious, because _ what _ on New Earth was keeping people on the motorway? Why was the under-city separated from the rest of the world? 

Troubled, the time travelers released the couple, though they neglected to return the fake weapons; even though they weren't real, strangers didn't know that, and they didn't want some other poor soul to be forced to stay in a car with those two for six years. The five of them trekked back to the TARDIS, and the doctor navigated them to the over-city and what he said was the Senate of New York. 

"I'd like a word with them," the Doctor grumbled. There's got to be thousands of people trapped down there, millions!"

He stormed out of the TARDIS, and then stopped. As the four of them exited after him, they saw why. All around him were skeletons. They were in a room full of the dead. But then they heard a sound, and realized that not _ everything _ was dead. Because there was a woman, who was also a cat. Martha did her best not to stare, and not to think about how her brother, who was a closeted furry, would be into this era of humanity.

"**Doctor, you've got to come with me**." The catwoman said urgently, gesturing for them to follow her. 

"**Do I know you**?" The Doctor asked, unmoving, and tilting his head to the side. 

"**You haven't aged at all**." She looked down, almost ashamed. "**Time has been less kind to me.**" 

"**Novice Hame**!" The Doctor embraced her, grinning. "**No, hold on, get off. Last time we met, you were breeding humans for experimentation**!" The Doctor shouted, pointing an accusing finger.

"**I've sought forgiveness, Doctor, for so many years, under his guidance**."

"I hate to break up this reunion here, but can someone explain why we are in a room full of skeletons?" Martha asked. 

"The city died. It was a new chemical — they called it Bliss. **Everyone tried it. They couldn't stop. A virus mutated inside the compound and became airborne. Everything perished, even the virus, in the end. It killed the world in seven minutes flat. There was just enough time to close down the walkways and the flyovers, sealing off the under-city. Those people on the motorway aren't lost, Doctor. They were saved**."

"But we're safe now, why not open things back up? How long have things been like this?" Harry cut in. 

"Twenty-four years," Novice Hame replied.

“You can’t have been running everything down there by yourself, is it all on automatic?” the Doctor asked.

“**There's not enough power to get them out. We did all we could to stop the system from choking**,” Novice Hame replied. 

“**Who's ‘we’?** ” the Doctor asked. “ **How did you survive?**”

“**He protected me. And he has waited for you, these long years.**” 

They heard a voice in the distance, and gladly followed the sound out of the disconcerting room full of bodies.

“**Doctor.**” 

It was a giant face, dangling tentacles growing out of its head instead of hair, encased in a tank. Martha stared, flabbergasted. She had never seen anything like it. The trio, long used to aliens, were not at all surprised to find that the person Novice Hame had been referring to was a giant head.

“**The Face of Boe!**” the Doctor exclaimed with a grin.

“**I knew you would come.** And you brought old friends.”

“You know them?” the Doctor asked, looking back at the trio and Martha.

“Better than you, in this moment.”

Novice Hame cut in, before the Doctor could question Boe’s statement. “**Back in the old days, I was made his nurse, as penance for my sins**.”

“**Old friend, what happened to you?**” the Doctor asked, sadly, pushing aside his questions in the face of how tired Boe appeared.

“**Failing**.”

“**He protected me from the virus by shrouding me in his smoke. But with no one to maintain it, the City's power died. The under-city would have fallen into the sea.**”

“**So he saved them**.” the Doctor nodded.

“As if he would do anything else,” Harry whispered to Hermione, who nodded sadly.

“**The Face of Boe wired himself into the mainframe. He's giving his life force just to keep things running**.”

Martha was beyond confused. How did this alien know them? And how could he use life force to power a city? And how could he be a _ head _ without a _ body _? This went against ALL of her medical training. 

“**But there are planets out there. You could have called for help**.” the Doctor pointed out, still looking into the eyes of the Face of Boe.

“**The last act of the Senate was to declare New Earth unsafe. The automatic quarantine lasts for one hundred years.**” Novice Hame said softly.

“It’s lucky we made it here then. We’re going to help, aren’t we Doctor?” Martha broke in to the conversation. She didn’t quite understand what was going on, but she wasn’t about to abandon the under-city. Despite the fact that the only people she had met there were kidnappers and people who bought and sold drugs, she knew that all that they did was motivated by desperation, and that they were more than just what she saw of them. People were complex and deserving of life in her time, and they had to be just as complex and deserving of life in the future. 

“Of course we’re going to help!” the Doctor leaped up, pressing a hand gently to the glass shielding the Face of Boe from the rest of the world. “As if we could ever turn away! Now, we need to open up that under-city. What have we got?”

“Well I tell you what we haven’t got, is a whole lot of power. The city is dead, Doctor,” Harry said, examining the variety of cords and controls around them.

“Ah, but Harry my love, we are so _ alive_,” Luna replied, taking out an elegantly crafted wand, one that appeared to be carved out of some kind of metal rather than wood, and as she waved it at the coils the Doctor had been about to pick up, they slithered to life, screens flickering on and machines beginning to hum.

Hermione huffed. “Well that’s just showing off.”

“Oh, you know you love it,” Harry whispered in her ear. 

“Takes one to know one,” Hermione hissed back playfully, before pulling out a wand of her own, which didn’t seem to be carved out of wood either. Harry sighed and followed suit, and the three of them breathed life into the city, breaking open the locks that had barred the motorway from being exposed to the surface, and letting those below see the sunlight for the first time in almost a quarter of a century. The Doctor looked on, nonplussed. This was the second time that a problem had been neatly resolved, and even _ less _ had been done on his part this time. He had barely had any time to show off. Not that he needed to, he was an adult, but these three, they were too much. They had too much power, and they were too at ease with it, especially for being so young. They were dangerous. He watched them laugh, wary. And the Face of Boe knew them, and moreover, he knew _ Martha_. He supposed that she was going to have more than just a single trip to the past and a single trip to the future after all.

The Doctor laughed, and his lips fell into something resembling a smile. But was it ever that simple?

“Doctor.” 

The Face of Boe was calling to him, even as the trio cast their magic and Novice Hame and Martha watched in awe. Now that the city was safe, they were simply restructuring the building, making repairs. It wasn’t actually simple of course, which is why they were watching in awe, as structures that had fallen into disrepair after decades of lack of use were made good as new, metal shining instead of rusting, computers whirring to life. Machinery could rise from the dead in ways that the population of New Earth could not.

“We all have secrets, Doctor.” The Face of Boe told him. “You more than most.”

“Oh, but you have yours just the same,” the Doctor said, leaning against Boe’s tank and whispering conspiratorially. “Legends say that you have lived for billions of years. That you will tell your final secret to a traveller. But I say, secrets are best left unsaid. You have life yet left in you.”

“Ah, but Doctor, I am old. I have seen so much. Perhaps too much. You understand that better than most; both of us; the last of our kind. Though you, my oldest friend, must know this: You. Are. Not. Alone.”

With that, the Face of Boe let out a kind of mental sigh, and closed his eyes, and went still. There was a terrible silence, as the _ feeling _ of his death washed over them, and a rush of power was pushed into the mainframe, the last life Boe had to give. 

The Doctor was shaken. He knew that there had to be more to the story with the Face of Boe. There must be. He was missing part of the picture, he couldn’t complete the puzzle because not all the pieces were there yet — there was yet more life to live. 

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“What did he mean, you are not alone?” Martha asked, as they walked back to the TARDIS.

“I don’t know,” the Doctor shrugged.

“You have us—me, Harry, Hermione, and Luna, is that what he meant?” Martha asked, with a smile.

“I don’t think so,” the Doctor said with a kind of fond condescension that made both Martha and Hermione’s hackles rise. Harry held Hermione back, but Martha had no such restraints. 

“Then _ what?” _

“It doesn’t matter,” the Doctor replied dismissively.

“It _ does _ matter, or you wouldn’t have been so shook up about it!”

“Just drop it! It doesn’t matter!” the Doctor snapped.

“**You don't talk. You never say! Why not?**” Martha was almost shouting now, they were standing in the narrow alleyway, the Doctor about to enter the TARDIS and the trio behind her. She whirred around to face him. “Why do you put up with him!? What made you come back?!”

Suddenly they heard singing. The entire city was singing a hymn, together, and Martha faltered. The trio didn’t say anything, knowing that this was Martha and the Doctor’s moment. 

The Time Lord sighed. “**I lied to you, 'cause I liked it. I could pretend. Just for a bit, I could imagine they were still alive, underneath a burnt orange sky. I'm not just a Time Lord. I'm the last of the Time Lords. The Face of Boe was wrong. There's no one else.**” 

The trio carefully didn’t make eye contact with one another, and Luna rubbed her chest.

“**What happened?**” Martha asked softly. 

The Doctor sighed, and opened the door to the TARDIS, silently beckoning them in, before beginning to speak, guiding them to a sitting room just to the side of the console room, where there were a series of cushy armchairs and a couch surrounding a roaring fireplace, that somehow never burned the spaceship down, despite always being lit. “**There was a war. A Time War. The last Great Time War. My people fought a race called the Daleks, for the sake of all creation. And they lost. They lost. Everyone lost. They're all gone now. My family, my friends, even that sky. Oh, you should have seen it, that old planet. The second sun would rise in the south, and the mountains would shine. The leaves on the trees were silver, and when they caught the light every morning, it looked like a forest on fire. When the autumn came, the breeze would blow through the branches like a song…**”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N:** Aaaaaaaand now I’m a little worried that I overdid it with the quotes in trying to make sure I didn’t leave anything out that was important to the episode, so please please give me feedback! Somehow writing the tenth Doctor is much harder than writing the eleventh! Or rather, writing based on episodes is much harder than freewheelin’ it. Which I suppose makes kind of sense? Anyway, I do really appreciate any comments that might give insight as to how you think I’m doing! Thanks!  
**Minor edits made on 10/21/2020**


	4. INTERLUDE I: AT SOME TIME OR OTHER, IN THE TARDIS

I know you remember me. I breathed these walls before I learned to breathe. You called me here for a reason. You called me to them for a reason. He doesn’t know me yet, but he will, because he does. He always knows me. But he doesn’t trust me yet. How do I make him trust me? He was my first teacher, and the first person I truly loved. I would do anything for the Doctor. The Doctor, who I have known my whole life, and whose life runs through mine. Oh how we run. And now he runs from me, even as I run to him. But I made a promise, a long, long time ago, I made a promise, that I would never be cruel nor cowardly. That I would never give up. That I would never give in. Those words have been etched on my soul since the day I began to exist, since I wound my way through time. Huh. I wonder how I pronounced that word. I suppose it says a lot about me. Or it says a lot about time.

My name is Luna Lovegood, and I am ... unprecedented.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a oneshot out now called "Plimpys and Printing Presses" that is about Luna's relationship with her father. It takes place in the universe of _Lunar Harmony Through Time and Space_, it's really cute and fluffy (at least in my opinion) and it drops some rather huge bombs in terms of what the canon interpretation of her parents are like. So you might want to check it out.


	5. NEW YORK 1930

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We just ran for our lives through a tunnel filled with men with faces like pigs, our only clue being this glowing green lump of what my preliminary scans read as flesh and that my friend here put in his pocket — which is absolutely disgusting by the way, Doctor, make sure you wash your coat thoroughly — and the tunnel full of the creatures that just dragged off one of our friends to gods knows where leads directly to this room, so if anything, we should be asking the questions. Especially since _I don’t know who Laszlo is_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Disclaimer:** Bolded text is taken directly from the episode _Daleks in Manhattan_ from Doctor Who 2005 Series 3. I do not own _Harry Potter_ or _Doctor Who_. There’s way too much racism, sexism, queerphobia, and discriminatory behavior up the wazoo for me to claim the original content for my own. I’ll stick to fanfiction thanks.  
**Author’s Note:** This chapter took me a long time to write. This story takes place in 1930, during the heart of the Great depression. Right now, we are facing a global pandemic, and an economic downturn that made writing this chapter and this fic very difficult, especially since I’m still struggling with how Doctor Who portrayed Martha as a character and the things I want to change about her representation, particularly during her trips to the past. Since I’m not an economist or a historian, but I do take all my writing seriously — yes, even fanfiction — I wanted to do this justice, which is part of why this has taken so long. In the end, I stuck fairly close to the episode in terms of history, dubiously trusting that the historiographers of the show did at least a passable job of getting their facts right. I realized that they really didn't, but at that point I was pretty locked in and I don't want to retcon anything. 
> 
> Also, warning to Fantastic Beasts fans: sorry, but it ain’t gonna happen. I’m stating here and now that as much as I think the niffler is cute and Newt is a good example of non-toxic masculinity, those movies are a hot mess that I will not touch with a twenty foot pole, so we’re just gonna pretend none of it happened. Not my suitcase, not my demiguise.  
Also, please check out the new fic in this series _An Unconventional Family Structure_, which takes place in the far future relative to here. It was a lot of fun to write. It’s also a Torchwood fix-it, so if that’s your jam, you’ll like.

“**Ah, will you smell that Atlantic breeze? Nice and cold. Martha** , Harry, Luna, Hermione; **Have you met my friend?**” the Doctor asked cheerfully, pointing upward. 

Martha gasped. “**Is that — oh my God, that’s the Statue of Liberty!**” 

Distracted by Martha’s delight, the Doctor missed the unease that briefly crossed the faces of the trio as they looked up at the statue, imobile, for at least the present moment. 

“**Gateway to the New World. Give me you tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free**,” the Doctor recited cheerfully. The trio, particularly Hermione, did their best not to roll their eyes at this description. This Doctor was far too optimistic, in her opinion.

“**Brilliant, I’ve always wanted to come to New York.** The real one, I mean, the original,” Martha grinned. “Rather than —”

“The new new new new —” Harry began slyly.

“Yes, Harry, we get the point.” Hermione interjected, “The three of us have been to this New York before, but this is a newer New York than we’re used to. Because look at that —” she pointed, and in the distance they saw the Empire State building, still under construction.

“Well, from the looks of this newspaper, sometime after November 1st 1930, depending on how old it is, though it can’t be more than a few days,” Luna replied serenely, holding up a paper she had found on a nearby bench. 

“**Eighty years ago. It's funny, because you see all those old newsreels all in black and white like it's so far away, but here we are. It's real. It's now. Come on then. Where do we want to go first?**” Martha asked, rubbing her hands together in excitement.

Harry looked over Luna’s shoulder and tugged the paper out of her hand.

“I think we’ll have to stick around a bit, make this more than a scenic detour” he frowned.

“Oh?” Martha asked, concerned at his tone.

“Look at the headline,” Harry showed the paper to Hermione, Martha and the Doctor.

“**Hooverville Mystery Deepens**,” the Doctor read out, his brow furrowed.

“**What’s Hooverville?**” Martha asked.

“It’s where we’re going next, back in the TARDIS everyone!” the Doctor gestured for them to follow, and they all piled in.

“Herbert Hoover, he was the… thirty-first? President of the United States?” Hermione proposed.

“Yes, **came to power a year ago, up till then, New York was a boom town, the Roaring Twenties and then**—” 

“**The Wall Street Crash, yeah? When was that, 1929**?” Martha supplied.

“Yeah. **Whole economy wiped out overnight. Thousands of people unemployed. All of a sudden, the huddled masses doubled in number with nowhere to go. So, they ended up here**,” the TARDIS landed with a thud, “in Central Park.”

“**They actually live in the park? In the middle of the city?**” Martha was shocked. “They were allowed to do that, no police chasing them out or anything?”

“Where would they chase them to?” Hermione asked with a tone of dismay. “I’m not sure the prison-industrial complex was quite that built up yet, to hold this many people.”

They walked out of the TARDIS and through the park to see a shanty town, overlooked by dozens of Manhattan skyscrapers. The Doctor was talking to Harry and Luna.

“**Ordinary people lost their jobs. Couldn't pay the rent and they lost everything. There are places like this all over America. No one's helping them. You only come to Hooverville when there's nowhere else to go.**”

The five of them watched as two men fought, one accusing the other over stealing his bread. Martha’s breath was caught in her throat, as she had a rough expectation of what would happen to a black man who threatened a white man, or worse, went through with that threat, in the 1930s.

Another black man came out of a nearby tent, speaking with authority and breaking up the fight,

“**Cut that out! Cut that out right now!**”

“**He stole my bread!**”

“**That's** ** _ enough!_ ** ** Did you take it?**” the leader snapped.

“**I don't know what happened. He just went crazy.**” the white man insisted

Hermione’s jaw clenched as she itched to say something, but held her tongue.

“**I said that's enough! Now, think real careful before you lie to me.**”

“**I'm starving, Solomon**,” the white man said dismally.

Soloman held out his hand patiently, and the white man reluctantly took the bread out from inside his coat.

“**We all starving. We all got families somewhere.**” Solomon broke the bread, performing a judgement of Solomon in giving each man half the loaf.

“**No ** ** _stealing_ ** ** and no ** ** _fighting. _ ** **You know the rules. Thirteen years ago I fought in the Great War. A lot of us did. And the only reason we got through was because we stuck together. No matter how bad things get, we still act like human beings. It's all we got.**”

The two fighters walked away, in separate directions. Hermione and Martha both blinked in surprise that the white man submitted to Solomon's authority so quickly. This was certainly a different 1930 than they were expecting. Harry and Luna also looked confused, but the Doctor was focused.

“Come along.” said the Doctor, before speaking to Solomon. “**I suppose that makes you the boss around here.**”

“**And, er, who might you be?**” Solomon asked, looking over the group carefully.

“He's the Doctor. I'm Martha. They’re Harry, Hermione, and Luna.”

“A doctor. Huh. Well, we got stockbrokers, we got a lawyer, but you're the first doctor. Neighborhood gets classier by the day.” He looked curiously at Luna, who was seemingly staring off into space in the distracted way that she did, and Hermione, who was still tense. Harry, meanwhile, had been surreptitiously scanning the perimeter for magical signatures or anomalies, and had come up frustratingly short.

“How many people live here?” Martha asked.

“**At any one time, hundreds. No place else to go. But I will say this about Hooverville. We are a truly equal society. Black, white, all the same** .” He paused. “ **All starving. So you're welcome, all of you.** ” He paused again, before turning to the Doctor. “ **But tell me. Doctor, you're a man of learning, right? Explain this to me. That there's going to be the tallest building in the world** ,” he pointed to the as-of-yet-to-be-completed Empire State Building. “ **How come they can do that, when we got people starving in the heart of Manhattan?**” He spread his arms wide to survey the assembly of tents and structures that the people had made for themselves.

“It’s not right,” Hermione massaged the base of her neck in anxiety as she murmured to herself. “Every time I see it I know it isn’t right and there’s nothing —”

“Hey, Hermione,” Harry pulled her aside and held onto her arms gently. “Love, what’s going on?”

“How can you stand it? I’d almost forgotten, it’s been so long, but how can you stand — all these people, all this suffering? And for what? Sure we can stop the Carrionites, or the Cybermen, or the Daleks, or the Angels, or whatever monster of the week, but poverty? Can we stop humanity?”

“I —” Harry faltered. “If there’s one thing we’ve learned from traveling with the Doctor, it’s that, throughout time, humanity is as amazing as it is terrible. Right now, humanity is showing how terrible it can be. But these people, here, who have built this community, that man, Solomon? I have a feeling he’s one of the amazing ones. So let’s see what he has to say. I get the feeling this is going to be another one of those adventures where we save the world,” Harry said with a wry smile.

Hermione smiled ruefully in return. “We’ve been saving the world since we were kids. Might as well continue the trend.”

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While Harry and Hermione were having their private conversation, Luna gravitated closer to Solomon, who tried his best to not show his discomfort at the invasion of his personal space.

“**So it’s true, what they say in the paper, people are going missing?**” Martha asked.

“**It’s true alright,**” Solomon confirmed gravely, beginning to walk toward a particular tent, still a little uncomfortable at how close Luna was to him.

“**But what does missing mean, exactly? People must come and go all the time, it’s not like you’re keeping a register**,” the Doctor scratched his head. 

“**Come on in,** ” Solomon waved them into his tent. It was cramped, but the three of them were touched at his hospitality. Though the truth was, he also probably didn’t want to alarm anyone else in the camp more than they already had been. “ ** _This_ ** ** is different.**”

“**In what way?**” Martha asked as she sat gently on Solomon’s cot. The Doctor sat down next to her, still keen to hear what Solomon had to say.

Solomon settled into his chair and leaned forward. **“Someone takes them, at night. We hear something, someone calls out for help. By the time we get there, they're gone like they ** ** _vanished_ ** ** into thin air.**” Luna was sitting on the ground, staring intently at something just above Solomon’s left shoulder. But, focused as he was on his conversation with the Doctor, he was at last able to ignore her.

“**And you're sure someone's taking them?**” the Doctor suggested, though Martha could tell that the Doctor didn’t buy his own suggestion. Solomon didn’t either, but he justified his position anyway, playing along.

“**Doctor, when you got next to nothing, you hold on to the little you got. Your knife, blanket, you take it with you. You don't leave bread uneaten, fire still burning.**”

“**So the question is, who's taking them and what for?**” the Doctor mused. 

Before anyone could say anything else Luna stood up suddenly, still staring at Solomon. “Time beats around you like a heart.” She cocked her head to the side. “I wonder why you are at the center of everything?”

“Luna,” Hermione hissed, coming into the tent. “What are you doing? Leave the poor man alone.”

“I think I saw her eating those psychic gummy worms from Delphi IV last night,” Harry admitted guiltily “I thought she had slept them off but…” considering Luna was now swaying to a music only she could hear while holding a bewildered Martha, he was now doubting that assessment. 

Just then, a young man they did not know burst into the tent. “**Solomon! Mister Diagoras is here.**”

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Mister Diagoras was a smarmy looking fellow, and everyone in their group took an instant disliking to him. Nevertheless, everyone in the group, save Luna, who was most definitely high as a kite, and Harry, who felt responsible for her given that he neglected to tell anyone else about her indulgence, went with Frank (the man who had informed them of Mr. Diagoras’ arrival) and Solomon on the adventure that _ definitely wasn’t sketchy at all what are you talking about this is 110% safe don’t you trust the guy with the slicked back hair in an all black suit who walks around with henchmen and gives off the vibe that he would sell out his own mother for a quick buck? _

While the Doctor, Martha, Hermione, Frank, and Solomon went to clear out the tunnel for Diagoras, Harry took Luna back to the TARDIS. She wasn’t at all steady on her feet, and Harry was starting to worry that this was something more serious than simply psychic gummy worms, for surely they wouldn’t have affected her quite this badly, and with such a time delay too.

Finally, they got back to the TARDIS and Harry got Luna settled on the seat. Taking out his wand, he did a vitals check, noting with no small amount of relief that everything seemed to be in order, her heartsbeats regular, her temperature normal, her breathing steady. When he checked her brain activity it showed she was awake and that all sorts of neurons were firing and nothing seemed particularly out of order, but honestly he wasn’t a healer and had never really understood the advanced parts of that scan. He was mostly checking to make sure that she wasn’t dying, though considering the circumstances that would be highly unlikely. He was fairly certain that the only problem was the gummy worms. He frowned and did another spell to check her magic levels, and his eyes widened as he registered how much artron energy she was excreting.

“Oh no, not again, not again. _ Every time _ this happens, and I’m never ready. At least the Doctor isn’t here. He didn’t know last time, so he can’t know this time.” Harry pulled out his sonic screwdriver — a gift this Doctor hadn’t given him yet — and locked the TARDIS doors. Realizing that at this point Luna wouldn’t be able to walk at all, he simply picked her up and carried her deeper into the TARDIS, not to their room but to another. It was described by the Doctor once as a “regeneration sauna” if there was such a thing. 

It was a place for one to safely release large amounts of energy without damaging the systems of the ship or building around them. The way the Doctor spoke of it, Harry got the sense that he had destroyed one or two many places via regeneration, and could use a place like this. It was also where Harry had been bringing Luna whenever she had one of her artron flashes. He just hoped that whatever trouble the others were in, it wasn’t something they would need his and Luna’s help for.

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Hermione closed her eyes, counted to ten, and tried not to swear because this is a situation where she really could have used the help of her partners, who were unfortunately _ not here _ . Instead she was stuck with a Doctor who she was steadily coming to realize was not _ her _ Doctor, not yet, and this whole different man was a completely different creature from the person she expected him to be. If these ridiculous _ men _ had just _ trusted _ her to handle the situation, and stun the pig men, they wouldn’t have had to run, and they wouldn’t have had to leave Frank behind. And now a man had died, or at the very least had been captured by creatures of an unknown species and alliance, all because they didn’t trust her to handle the situation. If they’d had three wands they could have handled the situation with ease, but with nothing but running companions at her back, Hermione had no choice but to run also. What a _ waste_. 

And now they were being held at gunpoint. Great.

“We just ran for our lives through a tunnel filled with men with faces like pigs, our only clue being this glowing green lump of what my preliminary scans read as flesh and that my friend here put in his pocket—which is absolutely disgusting by the way, Doctor, make sure you wash your coat thoroughly—and the tunnel full of the creatures that just dragged off one of our friends to gods knows where leads directly to this room, so if anything, we should be asking the questions. Especially since _ I don’t know who Laszlo is,” _ Hermione snapped. Perhaps she was just a little short on patience today, but she really, really didn’t like being held at gunpoint, fake gun or no.

“**Laszlo's my boyfriend**,” the woman said defensively, somewhat intimidated by Hermione’s glare, but trying not to show it. “**Or was my boyfriend until he disappeared two weeks ago,**” she frowned. “**No letter, no goodbye, no nothing. And I'm not stupid. I know some guys are just pigs but not my Laszlo. I mean, what kind of guy asks you to meet his mother before he vamooses?**” The woman was waving the revolver around in a casual manner such that everyone else was wincing, and Hermione rolled her eyes at the rest of the cohort, who had yet to cotton on to the fact that it was a fake.

“**Yeah. It might, might just help if you put that down,**” the Doctor said gently.

“**Huh? Oh, sure. Oh, come on. It's not real. It's just a prop. It was either that or a spear.**”

“Called it,” Hermione coughed. Solomon looked at her strangely, but she said nothing further. 

“What is your name?” Martha asked not unkindly.

“Tallulah”

“Tallulah—” the Doctor started.

“With three Ls and an H,” she nodded firmly.

“Right, got it, listen, Tallulah, Laszlo’s not the only one who’s gone missing—people are disappearing every night.”

“And those creatures…” Solomon murmured. Hermione looked at him sympathetically. She was perhaps being harsh in her earlier frustration. The man was scared, unused to aliens or any kind of creature outside of the normal muggle experience, especially in 1930. And he had just lost someone who was, if not a friend, at least a familiar acquaintance.

“What do you mean, creatures?” Tallulah asked, curious. “The same ones that took your friend? You think they took Laszlo?”

“We’re going to find out,” Martha told her reassuringly. 

“Look, everyone is in danger right now. We’re going to sort it out, but first I need to figure out what this is,” the Doctor took the jellyfishlike object out of his pocket and Tallulah startled back with a look of revulsion.

“Yuck! And you really were keeping that in your coat?”

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The Doctor and Hermione start to work on building a DNA scanner for the piece of flesh they found in the underground tunnel. While Hermione was able to verify that it was artificial, though in a way that was nearly imperceptible from organic, flesh, that it was nonliving, and nonmagical in nature, that was about the sum of what they could determine via magic alone. What they needed was to rig up a DNA scan, and crude as it may be, to get a chromosomal reading and find out where it was from. With the various props in the area, in combination with Hermione’s transfiguration skills, they had one up in running easily. The last part they needed came from Solomon, who was able to track them down a small Art Nouveau radio from backstage.

“This is perfect for the capacitors we need, and once we compare the results of this scan against the readings Hermione took we’ll know where this is from, and we’ll be one step closer to stopping whoever is controlling those creatures and causing the disappearances,” the Doctor said distractedly as he began to take apart the radio, passing bits and pieces to Hermione, who was integrating them into the mechanism they had created.

“**How about you, Doctor? Where are you from? I've been all over. I never heard anybody talk like you. Just exactly who are you?**”

“**Oh, I'm just sort of passing by,**” the Doctor said offhandedly, and Hermione rolled her eyes at the standard reply.

“**I'm not a fool, Doctor**,” Solomon replied shortly, and Hermione cheered internally. She loved the Doctor, she really did, but sometimes he needed to be put in place, and remember that not all people were as small as he treated them.

“**No. Sorry**,” the Doctor redoubled his efforts to complete working on the device, but he still continued to pay attention to Solomon, who had gone over to the Sewer entrance and was staring at the cover that he had closed over Frank.

“**I was so scared** ,” Solomon said in almost a whisper. “ **I let them take Frank because I was just so scared** ” Louder, he said “**I got to get back to Hooverville. With these creatures on the loose, we got to protect ourselves. Ain't no one else going to help us**.”

“**Good luck**,” the Doctor and Hermione both chorused, before appearing to go back to work.

“**I hope you find what you're looking for, for all our sakes**.”

Once he was gone, the Doctor turned to Hermione. “Have you heard from Harry and Luna? They could help the people in Hooverville. Or they could help us. This will work, but if they could pilot the TARDIS here that would be better.” He asked in a low voice.

“I haven’t no, but that isn’t something to worry about overmuch. They would have called in a true emergency, or I would have felt a disturbance in this,” Hermione held up her hand, which featured a set of rings. “Each of these rings is attuned to one of them, and we can connect to each other through them. Not telepathically, but I can sense emotional, psychic, and physical health for the Harry and Luna aligned with my timestream through these.”

“Those are handy. Where’d you get them?” the Doctor asked offhandedly.

Hermione paused before answering. “Spoilers.” she coughed. “Anyway, Doctor, I think we’re ready to find out where this beastie is from, don’t you?”

“Right!” the Doctor turned back to the mechanism they had created and the glowing piece of flesh they had wired into it. “What are you?”

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Harry stroked Luna’s hair gently as she slept. He had taken her back to their room in the TARDIS, once she had exuded the excess energy. She wouldn’t be up to any adventuring for a while though, and he didn’t really want to leave her when he didn’t know what had triggered the reaction this time. The Doctor had explained, in the brief moments they had with her, that the artron flashes were completely natural reactions to certain events, and that they would go away with time as Luna learned to control them, but that the knowledge of them had to be kept from her past selves at all cost.

“Easier said than done Doctor,” Harry muttered to himself. “Easier said than done.”

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“This is artificial,” the Doctor murmured.

“Yes, we knew that,” Hermione sighed. “It came up in my original scan.”

“Yes, but you also thought it might be organic, this genetical engineering—it’s brilliant. Marvelous work. Hold on. Oh whoever made this is _ clever_.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. The Doctor was doing his… Doctor-thing. She needed to just let him at this point.

“**Fundamental DNA type four six seven dash nine eight nine. Nine eight nine. Hold on, that means planet of origin. Skaro**.”

Hermione froze. “Did you just say —”

“Where’s Martha?” the Doctor jumped up. 

“She was with Tallulah in her dressing room, but now they’re performing onstage —”

“Martha—MARTHA!” The Doctor’s shouts became frantic as they heard shouts from the stage.

“Tallulah, where’s Martha?” Hermione asked as they got to where Tallulah and the other performers were clustered around the edge of the stage, clearly comforting each other.

“I don’t know, she ran off the stage.”

There was another scream, recognizably Martha this time, and they all ran back to the source of the noise, the props room, where the sewer grate was now open again.

“Doctor, they must have taken Martha too,” Hermione said in a low voice and she shoved the grate aside quickly, lowering herself down the ladder, the Doctor following quickly. It was as they were looking around, trying to decide which way Martha could have been taken, that they realized Tallulah had followed them.

“**No, no, no, no, no way. You're not coming.**”

“**Tell me what’s going on**,” Tallulah demanded.

“**There’s nothing you can do, go back**.”

“**Look, whoever's taken Martha, they could've taken Laszlo, couldn't they?**”

“**Tallulah, you’re not safe down here**.”

“**Then that’s my problem. Come on, which way?**” Tallulah snapped.

“This way,” Hermione directed, before the Doctor could get a word in. “I used Point Me to track Martha’s location. And stop patronizing us at every turn Doctor. It doesn’t become you, you are not a god,” Hermione snarled before stalking forward. The Doctor took a step back, startled. “I never said I wanted to be.” Frowning, and rather confused, he followed Hermione and Tallulah. 

“Look, I don’t want to get in the middle of a lover’s spat—” Tallulah started.

“We are _ not _ lovers,” Hermione said hotly, before putting up a hand to signal silence and then rapidly stepping backwards, pushing both Tallulah and the Doctor into the wall and flicking up her wand to create a barrier between them and the thing that was approaching. The Doctor pulled them back further and they hid in a service alcove until it was safely past.

“What _ was _ that metal?” Tallulah asked. Meanwhile, the Doctor was pulling at his hair, nearly tearing it out of his scalp. 

“No, no, no, no, no, no, _ no! _ They survived. They _ always _ survive while I lose _ everything!” _

“That, Tallulah,” said Hermione in a tight, clipped, tone, “was a Dalek. It is a creature, encased in a metal shell, who was born to hate and whose purpose is to see everything that is not a Dalek destroyed. It will not stop until every human being on this earth is dead. You, me, and this entire world must end, and even then it will never be satisfied because the Dalek knows not satisfaction, only hatred.”

“**But if it's not a human being, that kind of implies it's from outer space. ** OK, **that's a no with the kidding. Boy. Well, what's it doing here, in New Yor**k?”

“That’s it, you’re in far too much danger here, Hermione, can you apparate her back to her dressing room?” the Doctor asked.

“Of course I can. I’m all for autonomy, but Daleks in play changes the game entirely. Tallulah, I’d advise _ not _ holding your breath. And I hope you didn’t have a big lunch.” Before Hermione could take Tallulah’s arm however, she screamed, and it was easy to see why. There was a pig man right in front of them, who was able to see them thanks to Hermione dropping her shield in preparation to apparate. Rookie move, she should have checked before dropping defenses. 

That said, luck seemed to be on their side, because as it turned out it wasn’t just any particular pig man — it was Laszlo. 

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From what Laszlo told them, they were able to determine that those taken were sorted into “high intelligence” and “low intelligence.” Low intelligence were transformed into “pig slaves” while high intelligence were taken to a mysterious laboratory. Since Laszlo had escaped part of the way through his transformation, he wasn’t completely in the know about what went on in the laboratory, but with his help, the Doctor was able to meet up with a freshly reunited Martha and Frank, who were recently sorted into the “high intelligence” bracket. 

Meanwhile, Tallulah had reluctantly agreed to go back to the theatre, and so Hermione apparated her back to her dressing room, before returning, using a disillusionment charm and Harry’s invisibility cloak, to provide back up for Martha, the Doctor, and Frank. She also sent a message to Harry to be on alert, and received a message in return that Luna was safe but out of commission for the time being, but Harry was monitoring the situation from the TARDIS console room. She slipped on a pair of spectacles that would provide feedback to the TARDIS console monitor, slipped on a back up communicator just in case

As Hermione was entering the room she saw Martha stand apart from the line — probably because the Doctor couldn’t afford to be noticed and thus someone else had to do the work for him, as usual, and demand to be told the nature of the “Final Experiment.”

“Since when do Daleks have a concept of the need to bear witness?” she heard Harry murmur in her ear, a response to the Dalek’s non-answer to Martha’s question.

Given that she was invisible, no one could see the revulsion on Hermione’s face as Dalek Sec said that the “Children of Skaro” would walk again, and a bipedal creature crawled out of Dalek casing, wearing Mr. Diagoras’s suit, with but a single eye and a Dalek body for a face. As smoke billowed out from around them the creature spoke. 

“**I am a human Dalek. I am your future.**”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N 2:** I have a bit of personal beef with the Doctor and his actions in this episode, and the particular way that Hermione is characterized in this fic + the fact that this is a Harry & Luna lite chapter means that this chapter is a bit darker than some of the others. Sorry about that! The Shenanigans will be back in FULL FORCE once we get to the Lazarus Experiment.
> 
> **Minor edits on 10/21/2020**


	6. NEW YORK, 1930 (PART II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I don’t understand why you all stick around when Hermione hates the Doctor so much,” Martha whispered to Harry as they followed at a slower pace.   
“Hermione doesn’t hate the Doctor,” Harry sighed, running a hand through his hair. “It’s… complicated.”  
“Well uncomplicate it then,” Martha snapped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Disclaimer:** I'm writing this for fun and out of spite. I don't own the rights to Harry Potter or Doctor Who. Quotes are from the episode _Evolution of the Daleks_. I realized I should also be crediting the website where I found the transcript: <http://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/29-5.htm>  
**Author’s Note:** Unbetaed. If you are interested in becoming a beta reader for the Lunar Harmony Through Time and Space series please reach out to me at talia@jesmalestiel.com. 

Hermione looked at the human-dalek hybrid with revulsion as he continued to speak. 

“ **These humans will become like me. Prepare them for hybridization.** ” 

She registered that Martha was protesting and the Doctor had started his own diversionary tactics, that was fine. Judging from the way that he was waxing poetic about the benefits of humanity’s emotional connection to music, it figured he was going to use the radio as a sonic distraction. Hermione filed that away as she continued to case out the room and these particular Daleks. The cult of Skaro. They would have bullet-proof shielding, advanced enough to handle all but the most aggressive of the bombastic hexes and curses in her repertoire. She was confident that she could take on one, maybe two. But four? With this many civilians? Time for a tactical retreat until she had Harry as backup.

She did note that the Dalek-human hybrid, Sec, was the odd one out. His reactions to the Doctor were non-standard for a Dalek, and she noted as she lingered to cover all exits — and to privately spy on the Daleks — that he caressed the radio with a curiosity that was confusing and caused an odd emotion that was not quite hope. After the Daleks confirmed that they would not be pursuing her friends she almost turned to go before she noticed the three pure Daleks were clustered together and drifted closer to listen to their conversation. That the other Daleks were doubting Sec… that caused a whole other level of unease. 

Troubled, she disapparated with a practiced silence and reappeared near where the TARDIS was cloaked near Hooverville. She slipped in, feeling slightly guilty that she was taking advantage of instantaneous travel when she knew the others had a nearly three-mile walk, but she desperately wanted to check on Luna. Harry’s message had not made it seem like things were dire, Luna had just eaten an inconvenient number of gummy worms. But her comments about Solomon had made Hermione very uneasy, and she was in no small part glad to have a head start on the others, who she had about a half hour on if they ran the whole way — which she doubted they would considering how conspicuous that would seem this time of night. Then again, the Doctor had never cared about being conspicuous.

“Those are certainly interesting developments,” Harry said with a raised eyebrow as she entered.

“I know,” Hermione nodded. “I’m equal parts intrigued and concerned by the dissenting opinions of the Daleks. Infighting can be useful —”

“But it can also make things more dangerous,” Harry completed for her.

“Agreed,” Hermione hesitated before switching the subject “how’s Luna?”

“She’s okay,” Harry said quietly, looking at the TARDIS console. “She had another artron spike.”

“ _ Again? _ ” Hermione said sharply, alarmed.

“Yes, but it’s fine, I honestly think this was just sparked by the fact that she didn’t factor in the combination of having that many gummy worms while on the TARDIS again for the first time in a while. It wasn’t a good combination, but I think now that she’s getting used to this version of the TARDIS things should equilibrate.”

“If you say so,” Hermione sighed. Suddenly her pocket buzzed. It was Martha.

“Where  _ are _ you Hermione!? You didn’t come out of the tunnels with us. We’re worried, heading back to Hooverville and the TARDIS now.”

“Oh, damn, I’m sorry Martha!” Hermione bit her lip, frustrated with herself for not checking in. “I apparated straight back to the TARDIS to debrief with Harry.”

“Oh, thank goodness you’re alright! See you soon.”

“See you soon.”

Hermione and Harry exited the TARDIS, not wanting to give away its position when the Daleks inevitably tracked them down. 

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Solomon was shaken. He did not properly know what he had seen, but he knew it was unlike anything that he had seen before. He was warming himself by a fire when he was startled by the return of Harry and Hermione.

“Hermione! What happened to the Doctor? And Martha? Did you find Frank, is he —”

“They’re all fine, Solomon, on their way back here. I have a way of traveling that is a bit faster than they can manage, is all. I wanted to check on Luna,” Hermione smiled. 

Solomon heaved a sigh of relief at her words. “I’m so glad to hear it. Leaving Frank… it didn’t sit right with me. Things aren’t alright between white and colored folks, not in the slightest bit, not in this country, but in this particular Hooverville we’ve found a kind of peace. It’s not like this everywhere, let me tell you. The places I’ve been and seen…. Well, you’re travelers. I’m sure you know what it’s like, in a white man’s world, Hermione. Though the world that I’ve seen tonight...” He looked over at her. 

“Travelers indeed,” Hermione murmured. “The things I’ve seen,” Hermione paused, “the things  _ we’ve _ seen, are only getting worse. Tell me, Solomon. What would you say if I told you there were beings from beyond the stars?”

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Hermione and Harry had just finished their explanation of the Dalek threat to a now captivated audience of Hooverville residence when the Doctor, Martha, and Frank reappeared. Quickly the Doctor started insisting that the residents of Hooverville flee because it was a breeding ground for the Daleks.

“Hooverville is the lowest place a man can fall, there is nowhere else  _ to _ go Doctor!” Solomon insisted. “There has  _ got _ to be a way to reason with these things.”

“Solomon, we told you, a Dalek can’t be reasoned with,” Hermione cut in not unkindly “and Doctor, kindly shut up, you’re better than this,” she rounded on him.

“Excuse me?” the Doctor said, flabbergasted. “I’m trying to  _ save _ these people —”

“No, you’re trying to displace them out of the only thing resembling homes that they have! In running here you have led the Daleks straight to them, because now that you are here I’m sure that the Daleks are not far behind, if anything you’ve sped up the deaths of the people you’re claiming to save!” Hermione shouted.

“Now see here —” 

“No! If you would just listen to me for one goddammed second, we can save everyone but shut your gob and listen to the people with magic for once BOMBARDA MAXIMA!” The Doctor and everyone around except Harry flinched as Hermione whipped out her wand and let out a verbal blasting curse, the words amplifying its power. The Dalek, which had been approaching silently in order to surprise the group, had nevertheless tripped Hermione’s ward boundary. Harry similarly dispatched the second Dalek that was approaching from another flank.

“We are powerful Doctor.” Hermione said fiercely. “We are not unintelligent, we are not fragile, we will not break. We can save you just as much as you can save us. You are smart and clever and we love you to pieces but do not  _ stand there _ and tell me that this is the  _ land of the free _ and  _ proselytize  _ about  _ hope _ and  _ equality _ while people are living in shacks in the middle of a park and get constantly harassed by police for it. And don’t try and tell me that the Black folks don’t get the worse end of the stick. History is a whitewash, you taught me that, or you will. Now, let’s leave the people of Hooverville to their lives, and get back to the Empire state building because this isn’t finished, and I want it to be.”

Hermione abruptly turned away from the Doctor, going back to the TARDIS, leaving the rest of them staring at the Doctor, who looked to be in a state of confused shock before he ran after Hermione.

“I don’t understand why you all stick around when Hermione hates the Doctor so much,” Martha whispered to Harry as they followed at a slower pace. 

“Hermione doesn’t hate the Doctor,” Harry sighed, running a hand through his hair. “It’s… complicated.”

“Well uncomplicate it then,” Martha snapped. Harry laughed and Martha frowned at him.

“No, I’m not laughing at you, I promise, you just sounded so much like my mum at that moment. And a friend of mine, Ginny. You two are alike in some ways and very different in others. I’ll introduce you when we all get back to our time.”

“You’re avoiding the question, Potter.”

“Got me again,” Harry laughed before turning serious. “The three of us know the Doctor. But not… this Doctor. We know a different Doctor. A couple, actually, but you didn’t hear that from me. It’s dangerous for him to know his own future. It could fracture time and space even….”

“Will you two hurry up? There’s a planet to save!” Hermione was leaning out of the TARDIS to shout at them and Martha and Harry jogged the distance to meet her, leaving their conversation behind to jump into the time machine.

With a TARDIS that could turn itself invisible and wixen with an invisibility cloak, it was incredibly easy to examine the building plans to see how the Empire State Building was being altered, remove the Dalekanium, and stop the human Daleks from ever coming fully alive. After taking care of  _ that _ issue they apprehended Sec and Caan, but before they could decide what to do with the two (one and a half?) Daleks, Caan had exercised the emergency temporal shift, and the four of them were alone with the human Dalek.

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“And here I am. The last of my kind. The only of my kind,” Sec mused. “What will you do with me now, Doctor? Am I to die like my Dalek kin? Never to live, like the human Daleks? We tried to grow pure Dalek embryos, you know, but their flesh was too weak. It’s why we resorted to the human Daleks that you never let live. Will you let me live?”

Harry and Hermione looked at the Doctor, and then at each other, and gave a deep sigh. This was not going to end well.

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“Dalek Sec is in Stormcage, not getting out any time soon,” [“ _ Why _ did you have to say that Doctor?” Hermione moaned.] “anything I’m missing?” the Doctor asked.

“Can’t we do anything to help the men who got turned into pigs? That one Tallulah was dating Laszlo, he seemed sick, I think they can’t last long after the transformation,” Martha said, concerned.

“Well I might, Martha, except they all seem to have disappeared,” the Doctor frowned, looking at the TARDIS scanner. “There are no signs of them on the scanner. No life signs, or even signs of bodies, they’ve vanished.”

“That’s because we already took them,” came a singsong voice.

“Luna! You’re up!” Hermione smiled.

“Of course I am, silly. And  _ you’re _ silly, Doctor, if you think that a future version you hasn’t already gone back in time and retrieved all of the transformed men and brought them to the New Earth hospital to be healed. It’s almost time for that to become the present version of you. Go on now, or it will be past before you’ve done it!”

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author's note:** I had a LOT of trouble writing this, as you can probably tell from how long it took me to do so. I just struggled so much because I really hate these episodes, and I think you can probably tell from how much of the plot I skipped over and how much yelling Hermione does at the Doctor. Apologies for any errors with how this went along with the episode itself -- I did not put myself through rewatching it. For this story I looked up the distance between where the great lawn of Central Park (where the Central Park Hooverville was) and the Empire State building, researched the history of the Central Park Hooverville and who lived there, looked up and calculated the average running speed of adult humans, compared the distance between Central Park and Ellis Island with laughter (hence the presence of the TARDIS). 
> 
> You can always read more of my stories via clicking on my profile, but I also have a fanfiction website [jesmalestiel.com](https://jesmalestiel.com) and a personal website [word-for-sense.com](https://word-for-sense.com).


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